Mooring or docking a boat conventionally involves tying at least one mooring line between a cleat secured to the boat and a dock, pier, slip or other stationary mooring structure. This can be a difficult and trying task, particularly in rough water where the motion of the boat and slippery wet surfaces can render it difficult to properly secure the mooring line to the boat.
Moreover, the boat must be equipped with a mooring line of sufficient length to accommodate various mooring environments, although in many cases only a portion of the mooring line will be required to secure the boat. The excess mooring line can be difficult to stow neatly, and is thus subject to becoming knotted or tangled, or entangled with persons, cargo or equipment on the boat, which can pose both an inconvenience and a hazard.
Retractable boat lines have been proposed, in which a mooring line is wound about a payoff reel and dispensed as needed to moor the boat under the particular mooring conditions encountered at the time. An example of such a device is described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,090 issued Jul. 11, 1989 to Palmquist, which is incorporated herein by reference. This patent teaches a spring-loaded reel biased in the take-up direction and provided with a ratchet-type lock which is selectively engaged to ratchet teeth provided along the edges of the reel guide walls, to prevent rotation in the payoff direction when the boat is moored.
However, a moored boat can be subjected to very high peak forces due to wave action and currents. Repetitive momentary tension on the mooring line is transferred to the payoff reel, which in turn subjects the locking mechanism to high momentary stresses. The payoff reel guide walls in such a device, which ear against the locking mechanism, thus become subject to shearing or deformation unless they are formed to a high gauge which adds significant weight to the device, a considerable disadvantage in any type of boating equipment.
Further, the use of a ratchet-type lock with a spring-loaded payoff reel can cause problems due to the oscillating motion experienced by a moored boat in wavy conditions. Where the mooring structure is above the level of the securing point on the boat, as the boat is lifted upwardly by a wave the tension on the mooring line is temporarily released, which allows the reel to turn in the take-up direction. As the crest of the wave passes, the boat begins to fall, but in the newly locked position of the reel the mooring line is too short to allow the boat to freely roll off of the wave, causing the boat to list away from the mooring structure. Similarly, where the mooring structure is below the level of the securing point on the boat, when the boat falls into a trough the tension on the mooring line is temporarily released, which allows the reel to turn in the take-up direction and locks the mooring line so that as the crest of the next wave arrives and lifts the boat the mooring line is too short to allow the boat to rise to the crest of the wave, causing the boat to list toward the mooring structure.
It would accordingly be advantageous to provide a retractable mooring device with a payoff reel that can be locked in both the payoff and take-up directions with minimal effort. It would further be advantageous to provide locking means which engages into the payoff reel at a position remote from the edges of the reel guide walls, so that the locking mechanism can withstand the stresses imparted by the motion of a moored boat while maintaining the weight of the device to a minimum.